The moon is full tonight with clouds floating in and around it. Or is it the moon that is moving through the clouds? These are random thoughts to some, but very common in the hundreds of emails or letters that Barbara and I wrote to each other over decades since we first met in college. I was not around her when she first met Norman Mailer. She was still married to Larry Norris.
We met in the 1970s while we both had long hair, smooth skin and the wide-eyed notions of being artists who would change the world with the stroke of our brush. Somehow, our lives mirrored each other’s in so many ways that it became eerie, as if we were twins in some strange parallel universe. We had both had a yellow Volkswagen bug, then a dark green one. Even miles apart, we bought similar clothes, shoes and sometimes the same wallpaper patterns. On one visit to NY we came out of our bedrooms at the same time and had the same patterned fleece robe, same slippers and same color and brand tooth brushes. It became a standard joke that we had twin moments when our emails would cross and arrive the very same time on many a night. Funny at first, but deep down I think that we both knew that we traveled the same path to help each other through the hardest journeys in life together.
We had such different lifestyles, different family circumstances, different upbringings, but still the same on so many levels. Physically she was strikingly tall and beautiful with milky white skin and I was short, dark cinnamon skin and not so strikingly beautiful. Still, somehow, Fate gave both of us the comfort of our emails that we came to cling to as our security blankets, our sounding board and our confessionals.
Several years ago we realized that our emails revealed so much of our inner thoughts and personal truths that it may be best to delete all the thoughts we ever shared with one another. We decided a time and we would both push the delete button at that exact moment. I deleted everything . . . but she did NOT. She said she saved a few of the most beautiful moments. I was aghast! We set up another delete date for down the road and continued to write to each other every day until the week she died.
Today I am keeping my promise and deleting all our emails and letters, even the most precious and most beautiful ones. That is what I promised and that is what I have to do. Only one email will be shared and that was the one she asked me to give to Michael Lennon for Norman’s official biography. This is my tribute to my forever friend and confidant that owns parts of my heart and soul I’ve never shared with anyone else.
My twin, I love you.